I have glanced at these for the easier and lighter introduction of
another, a very different, a far more numerous, and a far more
serious class. The spoilt children whom I must show you are the
spoilt children of the poor in this great city, the children who
are, every year, for ever and ever irrevocably spoilt out of this
breathing life of ours by tens of thousands, but who may in vast
numbers be preserved if you, assisting and not contravening the
ways of Providence, will help to save them. The two grim nurses,
Poverty and Sickness, who bring these children before you, preside
over their births, rock their wretched cradles, nail down their
little coffins, pile up the earth above their graves. Of the
annual deaths in this great town, their unnatural deaths form more
than one-third. I shall not ask you, according to the custom as to
the other class--I shall not ask you on behalf of these children to
observe how good they are, how pretty they are, how clever they
are, how promising they are, whose beauty they most resemble--I
shall only ask you to observe how weak they are, and how like death
they are! And I shall ask you, by the remembrance of everything
that lies between your own infancy and that so miscalled second
childhood when the child's graces are gone and nothing but its
helplessness remains; I shall ask you to turn your thoughts to
THESE spoilt children in the sacred names of Pity and Compassion.
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